Strip me to the bone
by Ayingott
Summary: Sometimes Gokudera wonders, as he sits on the edge of a roof and smokes a cigarette that moves him closer to death step by step, breath by breath, how they even got this far. 8059


**Disclaimer: I do not own the characters.**

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**Strip me to the bone.**

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They don't seem to fit, like puzzle pieces from two different puzzles that are forced together. No matter what they try and no matter what others say they cannot work together, nor do they function when they are away from each other. A mystery of life, a flame that feeds from wet soil rather than dry wood. They are dysfunctional, broken and fallen in pieces.

But they still are. They still hold on to pieces that cut deep, to memories that are too painful to bear and the promises they make and would never keep. They hold on and hope that one day they will be able to let go.

Both are different. Like night and day. They don't work together at all and yet they can't live with each other.

Sometimes Gokudera wonders, as he sits on the edge of a roof and smokes a cigarette that moves him closer to death step by step, breath by breath, how they even got this far. Was it the vast sky that held them together? Or was it the need to be recognized for what they truly are and the need to scream into the night that they are different, pitiful little children.

Gokudera had once asked Yamamoto, when they were tangled in sheets and the afterglow of love, whether he would be able to fix him. There had only been silence as an answer for him, a silence that meant so much and told so little. A silence of denial, or so had Gokudera thought.

_Only you can fix yourself._

A whisper barely heard and barely spoken. A whisper that seemed to cut deeper than Gokudera had thought it would. No one had ever given an answer to this question before; no one had thought that they were good enough to do so. But now he had been given a choice, a road to walk on.

The smoke twists around him before disappearing with the wind and Gokudera tries to imagine a life where the choices were easier, lighter and weren't as twisted. There comes only one picture in his tired mind. This one lacks the one person that might have done something close to saving him, but not really. Not quite that.

He didn't want a life with no Yamamoto in it. It seemed strangely cold and Gokudera couldn't quite explain why.

The sun is already high up and he's only gone through three cigarettes, the smoked ones lay dead behind his back. Green eyes settle on the one that is nestled between his finger, smoking and seemingly innocent. There should be another way out of this, surely. There should be a life with no Yamamoto and his laugh that seemed to be etched in Gokudera's memories. But that was a life from a different world, he knew.

"Foolish thoughts." He reminds himself and places the cigarette between his lips, eyes turned to the sky and searching for answers that will never come and can only be found through fights and defeats. There was a need to prove that he was not as weak as the quiet whisper of his father told him. But could he do it?

Once again Yamamoto comes before his eyes, a goofy smile on his lips and certain brokenness in his brown eyes. _Gokudera, you really are amazing! Being able to solve all of this, _the other had once said. But were those words really meant for him, or were they meant for the Gokudera that was merely a small and weak part of him. A Gokudera that he didn't truly know and was, actually, afraid of.

No, Yamamoto knew how it was to be broken and in pieces and unsure how to rebuild yourself up again. The Yamamoto that Gokudera knew, that he had discovered with time, would direct those words to the real Gokudera. The one that spent his days wondering whether he was worth it, trying to find a cure for the twisted and cruel smiles that hid under his bed and his shadow and wished for someone to find him, the _real_ him.

The ash from his cigarette falls off and falls down until it's blown away with the wind. Just like the smoke. A child searching for his other half, a puzzle piece that would be his and his alone. Could he already have found it? Probably no.

Before, before he had truly known Yamamoto and the silent and guarded heart that was beating in the teen's chest, Gokudera had thought that his missing _something _was Tsunayoshi, the sky that accepts them all. But, as always, time opened his eyes and taught him not to make rash decisions and blindly reach for the first ray of light that is passed his way. Tsunayoshi was the sky for everyone, the one that kept them all together and the one that was there to keep them from falling. He wasn't Gokudera's missing piece; he was simply the one who directed Gokudera in the right direction.

His puzzle piece was Yamamoto. A crooked one and with no shape, slightly scratched and a corer torn off but a puzzle piece no less. His puzzle piece. Only his.

The sun is hidden behind the clouds and his cigarette breathes its last breath. Gokudera looks at it with an empty look and then throws is behind him, where the others are. He should stop now, really. The heel of his foot taps the wall of the building he is sitting on and the sound is swallowed by the silent howling of the wind around him. Evening was coming.

A meeting with Yamamoto was mere minutes away, but he didn't feel like moving.

A sigh rolls past his lips and Gokudera looks down on the street below his feet. Yamamoto had once come with him here, interested in seeing yet another side of his lover, a side that was usually hidden and pushed aside in order to complete the ambition that had lived in his heart for years. It had been as quiet as today. No words have been exchange and only when they were down, with their feet on the ground and minds caught up with the reality, did Yamamoto grab onto Gokudera's hand and promised to never come here again.

This was Gokudera's place. His escape, his sanctuary.

Yamamoto may hold Gokudera's heart in his hand – the frail thing first cold to the touch and only with time did it start to give off the warmth of trust – but he has yet to see and know all of the Storm's soul and mind. It took time for Gokudera to fully trust someone, to willingly let someone through the locked and bolted doors in his heart where the most broken shards of him were kept.

But Yamamoto was a patient man and he waited, quietly and gently urging Gokudera to walk in his own pace, to choose his own path. There was no rush, no pressure and no need to force himself to do these things that he had never done before. That he had no knowledge of.

Trust was a fickle thing.

Something invisible and unreal, a fragment of his imagination, surely, prods Gokudera, as if to remind him that it was time to go, time to stop escaping from the real world below him. "I should call him…" he mutters to the same invisible _something_ and slowly stands up. "Better not." A decision follows; the final one.

He was stripped bare before Yamamoto now, almost. The other knew almost everything about him, most of the secrets that Gokudera kept guarded. It was a pleasing feeling actually – knowing that there was someone out there who _knew_ and who _could help_ when he was in need of fixing. Stripped yet protected. Scared yet braver than ever before.

Once the door closes behind him life starts to move again. Once again he is the Storm that never rests and the right hand man that helps his boss. As he stands on the street and looks up to the roof that he had been on just moments ago he locks away a part of him that belongs to the rooftop and the quietness. Gokudera becomes himself again, quietly and easily.

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**A/N: This could be seen as a story that looks into Gokudera, his heart and mind. This could be a story of how Gokudera sees his relationship with Yamamoto and how it has 'fixed' him, in a sense. Or this can be a story of both of those things and something more. That is for you to decide.**

**Ayingott out.**


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